The present invention relates in general to safety barriers and, more particularly, to a safety gate used to impede ingress/egress to balconies or other elevated platforms under construction and to automatically text remotely-located authorized personnel when the gate is removed/opened and when it is restored/closed.
During the construction of a structure that may comprise a height from which a person could be injured from a fall, ingress/egress to an unfinished balcony or other elevated platform on an upper story or other elevated level poses a hazard to personnel working on or around that structure. A worker could inadvertently fall through an incomplete portion of the balcony, or fall over its edge if no banister has been erected along the perimeter of the balcony, etc. Typical precautions that are taken are to place “limit of disturbance” (LOD) mesh at the ingress/egress to the balcony or other elevated platform to warn those in the vicinity that passage through the ingress/egress should be avoided. However, the LOD does not provide any actual “barrier” to prevent passage and someone could easily push aside the LOD and proceed. Furthermore, even if a barrier were erected at the ingress/egress, if someone were successful in removing it, there would be no way to either remind that person to restore the barrier, or if removed illicitly, to alert authorized personnel to its removal and to take immediate action to restore the barrier.
Thus, there remains a need for automated alert system and method that can immediately detect the removal of a barrier, or the opening of a gate, to an ingress/egress of an elevated balcony or other platform and to provide remotely-located authorized personnel with an alert that the barrier has been removed or that the gate has been opened and to continue that alert until the barrier is restored or the gate closed while also providing a “local” alert to personnel in the ingress/egress vicinity of the danger posed by the removed barrier or opened gate. The system and method also needs to provide an automatic indication when the barrier is restored or the gate is closed.
All references cited herein are incorporated herein by reference in their entireties.